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		<title>A very bad day &lt;https://y.st./en/weblog/2017/09-September/18.xhtml&gt;</title>
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			<h1>A very bad day</h1>
			<p>Day 00926: Monday, 2017 September 18</p>
		</header>
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2017/09/18.jpg" alt="A key broken in a Bell brand lock that refuses to come open" class="weblog-header-image" width="800" height="480" />
<section id="general">
	<h2>General news</h2>
	<p>
		Again, I was between working machine states yesterday, so I wasn&apos;t able to finish writing about the events the day held for me.
		After I started the installation on the aforementioned third hard drive, I found the installer was indeed able to detect and make use of the Wi-Fi card.
		With that in mind, I cancelled the installation and started it again on <a href="/en/domains/morgan.local.xhtml"><code>morgan</code></a>&apos;s old hard drive, as it was bigger.
		While the installer overwrote the entire hard drive with random data for security reasons, I cleaned out my living room to prepare it as a storage room for my mother.
		I didn&apos;t finish, but I made great progress!
		All three couches are out of the room and in the tiny room I&apos;d originally told her she could use as even more storage space.
		I can&apos;t make my new stuff take up zero space though, so as she freaked out and told me she didn&apos;t want to store stuff with me, which resulted in my not holding back in acquiring furniture, she&apos;ll just have to deal with the loss of the smaller room.
		I also found that most of the bins I have are too tall to fit under my new bed.
		That&apos;s too bad.
		The shortest of the bins may yet fit, but I&apos;ve yet to test this.
	</p>
	<p>
		My money stamp has broken for the third time now.
		This time, I don&apos;t think I&apos;ll replace it.
		If I ever do, I likely won&apos;t get another self-inker.
		The moving parts are just too much of a vulnerability.
	</p>
	<p>
		The overwrite finished, but after the installer had been downloading packages from the Web for a while, it halted.
		I tried restarting the installer, which again, made it want to perform the hours-long process of overwriting the contents of the disk.
		I&apos;ve never prevented this process in the past, no matter the circumstances, as I don&apos;t know the exact nature of the decreased security level caused by doing so.
		However, it&apos;s always been my theory that the overwriting with random data is to obscure file boundaries, and thus file sizes and approximate disk usage size.
		As new data is written, it&apos;s encrypted, so wherever blank or unencrypted data exists in on the disk, the currently-encrypted file system must not have used.
		If this theory is true, there shouldn&apos;t be a problem in cancelling the overwrite process if the last file system present on the disk had been overwritten with random data and encrypted.
		Any lingering, encrypted data would blend with the randomness, and there&apos;d be no way to separate the two or decrypt the former.
		I don&apos;t have time, so for the first time, I cancelled the overwrite.
		Again, the installer halted upon network error.
		I don&apos;t recall how many times I tried to make this work, but there was a network error before I went to work.
		I was scheduled for a six-hour shift, and due to a mistake on the head manager&apos;s part, I ended up staying over seven hours instead, closing the store in place of the person that was actually supposed to.
		I left the installer running that whole time, plus my commute time, hoping the installer would finally realise it couldn&apos;t get through to the network and would let me re-establish the dropped connection.
		I had no such luck and the installer made zero progress.
		The thing&apos;s too stupid to even understand the concept of a dropped Wi-Fi connection, so there&apos;s zero way to recover from one.
	</p>
	<p>
		With the regular installer constantly failing, I tried to use the graphical installer.
		It was more of a pain to use, as cursor use was required for some parts of the installation, but the cursor kept jumping back to the centre of the monitor when I&apos;d try to move it away.
		The graphical installer ran into the same issue as the regular installer though.
		Whenever the connection would drop, the installer would fail to find the packages it needed online, but wouldn&apos;t allow me to halt the process and set the connection back up.
		Likewise, it failed to realise it needed to re-establish the connection itself.
		This wasn&apos;t going to work on my spotty connection at home.
	</p>
	<p>
		And that brings us to today.
		I headed to the public library to complete the installation, as it sure wasn&apos;t working here at home.
		There, I found the installer moved quicker, but it still had the network issues that prevented installation from going anywhere after a time.
		I tried a few times, but to no avail.
		The installation always irreversibly halted upon network failure, and network failure always happened eventually.
		Come to think of it, was this the Wi-Fi card I&apos;d always had connections problems with?
		Is it the Wi-Fi card giving me problems, not the Wi-Fi signal?
		I headed home for a screwdriver and the Linux Mint hard drive, then came back to the library.
	</p>
	<p>
		With the Mint hard drive in the machine, I tried to torrent the live <abbr title="Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment">LXDE</abbr> version of Debian.
		With the live <abbr title="compact disc">CD</abbr> image, I should be able to get a working installation going without a functioning network connection.
		It seems the public library blocks torrents though, or something.
		I couldn&apos;t get a single seed, and Debian&apos;s a very popular operating system.
		I mean, it&apos;s got a small market share <strong>*percentage*</strong>, but there&apos;s <strong>*always*</strong> enough seeds for the <abbr title="compact disc">CD</abbr> images when you need them.
		I ended up going using the <abbr title="Hypertext Transfer Protocol">HTTP</abbr> download, which took about five hours and kept failing partway through.
		All that while, I had nothing to eat, as we&apos;re not allowed to eat in the library.
		I&apos;d had a tiny breakfast, as I was anxious to get the system installed and didn&apos;t think it&apos;d take this long.
		Thankfully, Firefox allowed me to pick up the download where it left off every time it failed; it didn&apos;t make me start the download from the beginning.
	</p>
	<p>
		Once I got back home with the <abbr title="compact disc">CD</abbr> image, I found the <abbr title="Universal Serial Bus">USB</abbr> drive I&apos;d misplaced with the live Debian <abbr title="compact disc">CD</abbr> image already on it.
		Had I found that in the first place, I&apos;d already have the system installed by now.
		Frustrated, I started the installation with the freshly-downloaded image, as it was a point version newer.
		After a few minutes, I realised to my horror that I&apos;d started the installation on the Mint hard drive; the Mint system was destroyed!
		If the new installation somehow lacked Wi-Fi support, I was completely out of luck.
		I had no way to get back to any viable state.
		Thankfully, the installation went well and the fresh system is on speaking terms with the Wi-Fi card.
		I think I&apos;m done with the stupid net installer, perhaps permanently.
		If it can&apos;t even handle an imperfect connection, it doesn&apos;t work in this highly-imperfect world.
		I&apos;ll just stick to the live <abbr title="compact disc">CD</abbr> image installers from now on.
	</p>
	<p>
		As a side note, I realised after I&apos;d mostly completed the installation image download that I could&apos;ve been using that time to work on coursework.
		As it was too late, I rationalised it away, saying I needed my setup in place to take proper notes and to actually work on assignments, but the truth is, I could&apos;ve taken notes and started assignments in a plain text file.
		However, considering my careless wiping of the Mint drive instead of swapping the drive out, I probably would&apos;ve wiped my coursework and notes along with it.
		It would&apos;ve been a waste of time, but I could only know that in retrospect.
	</p>
	<p>
		Between my current state of starvation and the rough week I&apos;ve had, I decided to treat myself to a burrito and some tater tots at a local fast food restaurant.
		However, upon further thinking, I instead went to the grocery store to get a burrito and tater tots there to cook at home myself.
		It&apos;d be cheaper.
		It was still more money than I needed to spend, but I needed a pick-me-up and I&apos;ve been being really good about money lately, at least to the extent possible given my current chain of bad luck.
		As soon as I was ready to go out though, it started raining pretty heavily.
		Joy.
		I&apos;ve been wanting rain to help clear out the smoke in the air, but not while I&apos;m on a quick grocery errand!
		Once I got to the store, I found I&apos;d left my wallet at home, and I needed to go back for it.
		Once back and out with my groceries, I found my bike lock was again failing to open.
		I tried for several minutes until the key literally broke.
		I&apos;ve now got a broken bike key, and my bike&apos;s still locked up at the grocery store.
		I had to walk home, but even worse is the fact I won&apos;t have my bike later when I need to move quickly.
		I&apos;m never buying a Bell brand lock again!
	</p>
	<p>
		I&apos;ve now got two days to finish my coursework for the week, and one of those days will be half taken by a shift at work.
		Joy.
		<a href="/en/domains/bailey.local.xhtml"><code>bailey</code></a> is up and running though, so I can actually get started now.
	</p>
	<p>
		I forgot to mention that the day before yesterday, when I thought it was safe to rest for a bit, I read some stuff online.
		I don&apos;t recall weather the subject of the forum thread was masturbation or gayness, but the forum was one of a religion recovery group.
		At one point, someone said they&apos;d wonder what they did wrong if their child turned out to be gay.
		Another person jumped on them, saying you don&apos;t do something to make people gay, they just are.
		They also said it&apos;s okay to be gay, because it&apos;s not a choice.
		Yet a third person jumped on that second person, saying that the lack of choice isn&apos;t what makes it okay.
		If someone <strong>*could*</strong> choose to be gay, that&apos;d be a perfectly reasonable and acceptable choice for them to make.
		I guess I kind of came to a similar conclusion already, and that&apos;s the only reason I&apos;ve been able to keep from tearing myself apart again for this long.
		I keep feeling like some part of me <strong>*is*</strong> choosing this, and if I could just let go, I could be bi.
		Yet another part of me can&apos;t stand the thought of being with a woman, so I can&apos;t actually let go and be bi.
		It doesn&apos;t work that way.
		But it doesn&apos;t make my mixed feelings any easier to deal with.
		I decided though that I didn&apos;t owe my sexuality to anyone, and if I want to reserve it for a fellow male, that&apos;s my right and privilege to do so, regardless of whether it&apos;s actually possible for me to make myself be any other way.
		But I think it did me a lot of good to read someone besides myself saying that it&apos;d be okay to choose to be gay if being gay was even a choice.
	</p>
	<p>
		My <a href="/a/canary.txt">canary</a> still sings the tune of freedom and transparency.
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